


Letters in the Attic

by ShayLaLaLooHoo



Series: Short Stories [2]
Category: Original Work, Paranormal Creatures - Fandom
Genre: Blood, Christmas, Depression, F/M, Gothic, Gothic Romanticism, Horror, Mixed form, Paranormal, Poetry, Romance, Stalking, Supernatural Elements, and i'm not a poet, don't make fun of my poetry, i love setting gothic stuff during christmas time, more bloody and melodramatic and less valentine's day yaknow?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-19
Updated: 2019-04-05
Packaged: 2020-01-05 00:49:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 4,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18355199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShayLaLaLooHoo/pseuds/ShayLaLaLooHoo
Summary: "Winona found the love letters in the attic, tucked into the windowsill and wrapped with a vintage locket and ribbon."Something is living in this house.





	1. My Darling,

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Maybe someday I'll go through and actually _write_ the letters in cursive, on paper, just for mood's sake. There's also a small visual thing that didn't carry over into the formatting, so I'll fix that someday.

Winona found the love letters in the attic, tucked into the windowsill and wrapped with a vintage locket and ribbon. Although she was wary to touch the delicate papers, it felt wrong to leave them.

She wondered why she hadn’t seen them before; she’d been living in this ancient house with her sorority for months now. While her roommates took a break from  putting away Halloween decorations to get pizza, she smuggled the letters down to her bedroom, placing them in a hidden compartment in her jewelry box. However, she was soon distracted by lunch, cleaning, and schoolwork again, and something about the letters, whether it was the mystery behind them or the fact that she’d still kept them secret, made her nervous to open them.

However, on one restless and stormy night, Winona’s curiosity outweighed her trepidation, and she carefully untied the ribbon with her half-frozen fingers to free the  
oldest letter from the top.

  _My Darling,_

> _Forgive the outpouring of my heart. I believed, once, that I had lost all ability to love, and yet as I gaze upon you, I doubt._
> 
> _I cherish these hallways – this house was so lonely before I first saw you – and I continue to dream of the day when we shall meet on equal terms. To see you is to drink in the daylight that has been deprived of me for this long time._
> 
> _All I desire is to see your eyes again and to know that you see me in return. I know that, to you, I must seem to be little more than a shadow, a vague presence, but I know that you are truly the one who could make me happy._
> 
> _Please, my darling, say that you will be mine._

It was unsigned, and Winona felt partially relieved at that. This letter, as excessively gushy as it was, felt far too personal for her to know exactly who had written them and to whom they were directed. Yet she couldn’t stay away, and once she’d read three letters, she realized that they were written by the same masculine hand to his love, his darling, his heart, with no other hand replying. Perhaps, Winona thought somberly, his affections weren’t reciprocated.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another original story written for a class, this time creative writing. This was just a challenge for me to utilize poetry in a story. The original concept, where there was a ghost in the house, was an attempt to pay tribute to Charles Dicken's Christmas ghost stories, but make it into a dark romance, as I love to do. i uploaded it here because, as my laptop broke this semester, I'm trying to put as many finished stories online as I can.


	2. My Love,

Winona and her ennui were familiar enemies; it was the reason why she’d moved out of her parents’ house into the sorority, yet its effects had already settled in her chest. She’d filled a few shelves of the library with her own books, although the vast amount of unused space drove her crazy. Most of the rooms were empty, in fact, and Winona acquiesced that the minimalist nature of college and the exquisite detail of Victorianism couldn’t coexist. However, in spite of this, Winona fed her fancy by trying to find more secrets in the house, even hoping that she could find a passage hidden somewhere.

On days when her gloom was unmanageable, her roommates felt it necessary to host a get-together to “shake things up” and refresh her spirit. While one of them would wrestle her auburn hair into a braid, the rest would go and buy enough Chinese takeout to feed the horde of neighbors they’d invited, and they’d all watch a superhero flick.

On one occasion, while they chatted with one another over the movie, Winona focused on getting to the bottom of a carton of orange chicken, entirely neglecting rice and vegetables. However, once the conversation turned to the house, her attention  
piqued.

“I’m surprised that this sorority’s stuck around this long,” one of the neighbors said.

“Why, is the house haunted?” Pearl asked, giggling as she poked at some fried rice. Her blonde hair drooped over her shoulder.

He shrugged. “Most of the sisters leave. The mom makes renovations, then the girls up and go elsewhere.”

“The renovations must have paid off. We haven’t had any issues yet.”

“No one ever complained about the house itself,” another neighbor piped up, “or about the sorority. The most I’d ever gotten out of anyone was that they all felt that they had to leave.”

“And they didn’t say why?” Winona finally cut in.

“Nah, I think the word they used was ‘compelled,’ and you don’t hear that used much.”

“Huh, weird,” Pearl noted. The subject changed, and Winona went back to her private thoughts and her takeout. 

* * *

 

After the movie ended, Winona excused herself. As she stripped down for bed, she dumped her clothes in a pile on the floor. She was weary of her half-hearted attempts at staying tidy. Furthermore, the closet in her room was backed with thin, weak wood, and she could hear the mice running behind the wall, and she’d rather not wake up to a mouse hiding in her pocket.

She stifled her despondency until she was in bed, one of the letters tantalizingly close to her fingers. She wasn’t aware of how long she’d been tossing and turning, but soon enough, she caved to the temptation. Taking a letter from the top, Winona settled herself and turned on her lamp. Before she started reading, though, she ran her fingers over the penmanship; the letters were tall and lean, evenly proportioned, and without a hint of shakiness. Perhaps, she mused, the author looked as regal as his hand writing, perfectly composed and graceful. It was unlike any other man’s handwriting she’d seen at college, even that of her professors.

> _My love,_
> 
> _When I see you, I am filled with bliss, a long-lost memory you have awakened. Try as I might to capture your beauty in a way that shall endure for as long as my love for you, words and paints fail me. How could one ever pluck a star from the sky and hold it in their hand? Surely some may not notice it gone, but there is always one who seeks it out and would be devastated to find the sky less bright._
> 
> _Each night I awaken and feel as though your bloody-red hair has wrapped around my neck. The fragrance of willows permeates the air through which you drift, and it reminds me of nights I once spent overlooking the pond in the park._
> 
> _Yet your neck, as smooth and graceful as a swan’s, is left undecorated, its perfume thick and heady. You truly need no accessory to accentuate the beauty you carry so casually, but perhaps this trinket may reveal, in the slightest measure, the devotion I feel for you. Some coming day, I shall find the courage to give it to you, yet until then, I wait for my courage to build._

Although Winona rarely wore jewelry, she had to admit that the locket was a beautiful thing. It must have been made of a pure metal, as it was not tarnished and seemed to be in good shape; inside was a painting of “a lover’s eye.” She’d learned about the tiny, detailed paintings in her Victorian Culture class; usually, they were commissioned for anonymity’s sake, to hide the face of the admirer while remaining personal to their lover.

Winona was simply satisfied to finally put a trait to the writer. The eye was sharp and piercing, a stormy gray touched with flecks of golden lightning, set in pale skin with dark lashes. Winona was so intrigued that she briefly wondered how she’d look with  
eyes like those instead of her usual brown.

She was tempted to put the locket on.

On one hand, it wasn’t meant for her, and it had been given as a deeply personal gift; on the other, it was a shame to keep something this beautiful hidden away.

Rationalizing that the giver and recipient were both dead and that she was honoring their memories, she began to wear it always, only taking it off at night. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, my name is Shayla, and I hate subtlety.  
> Also Winona you're so dumb.


	3. Tormentor

The locket, being as old as it was, was as heavy of a weight on her chest as her depression. Whenever she kept herself busy around the house, whether by cooking, cleaning, or exploring, her roommates didn’t worry about her. However, when she did spend her day reclusively, her roommates invited over more people and encouraged Winona to get out of her comfort zone.

“When was your last job search?” Jenna asked, popping her gum. She didn’t look away from her laptop screen as she addressed Winona. “Maybe employment would help.”

Winona was irritated enough that she was about ready to pop Jenna’s jaw. “A while, probably.”

“I can totally help you.”

Winona only nodded; any mention of job searching was a quick way of irritating her. What she had was more than depression, and she barely had the energy to pursue her History degree. Exhaustion and tension overtook every joint and muscle in her body. It made her weak – almost as weak as Jenna herself looked.

“Are you okay?” Winona asked. Jenna seemed a little surprised at the question. “I mean, you’re paler than usual.”

Jenna shrugged. “Haven’t been sleeping well. I’m just a little tired.”

That solidified the end of their conversation. Winona muttered a quick apology and went back to her reading. She’d turned to Emily Dickinson and John Clare in an effort to find someone to relate to, and she kept the collection with her whenever she roamed the house. She reserved the letters for when she was alone, but every time she thought she was near the end of the stack, there was always more:

> _Darling,_
> 
> _You are the tormentor of my mind, if only because I am shaken by even the briefest glimpse of you. My heart, now awoken, craves your compassion and your attention. What could be more purely beloved than you, who so often feels alone, who is adored with a passion beyond my reason? You are the sole, precious creature who can truly understand how I feel, just as I understand you, as we move through this ongoing dirge of existence._
> 
> _I have little but these humble words, which can never capture the depth of my affections, to give you. Someday we will be united, married beyond an earthly comprehension; I only dream of spending every moment with you._

Winona wasn’t sure if it was too cheesy or not, but it was so distressingly romantic it didn’t matter. 

* * *

During the first week of December, Pearl missed her classes while Jenna came home early from her shift at the local cake shop; both had come down with an unidentifiable illness. They suffered fatigue like Winona’s, but they were fairly certain it was only a cold judging by their clammy skin. Recovery was slow, but they made it. The most exciting thing that happened that week was the discovery of a dead dog in the backyard – an old, stray Saint Bernard – but Beth, the most muscular of the sorority sisters, had managed to dig a shallow grave in the frozen dirt as Pearl wept.

In a matter of weeks, near Christmas, Winona had worked up the courage to go up to the attic alone. While digging through the trunks, she’d found an old hope chest with a rusty lock, which easily gave way when Winona put pressure on it just so. Inside she’d found a moth-eaten trousseau – it was likely worth a lot, even in its state of damage, but it felt wrong to sell it off. She elected to keep it a secret from her roommates. These things didn’t belong to them.

Still, she couldn’t resist digging through the contents, and she had found a beautiful gown of seafoam-green silk, with yellowed lace trailing the length of the skirt down to the floor and trimming the low collar and mid-length sleeves. She couldn’t quite place the era, as the stiff, round collar was rather low, and it was missing any undergarments that would help determine its silhouette. It was a beautiful thing, if not somewhat holey; like the locket, she felt sad about leaving it in the attic, but knew it had to be done. It wasn’t subtle while the necklace was.

To burn off the burst of energy she’d received from this find, Winona had gone exploring again. She’d managed to find a secret passage—a servant’s corridor—leading between the kitchen and the lounge, which was currently being used as Beth’s bedroom. Thankfully, Beth was out of the house when Winona had stumbled through, so she hadn’t been startled. However, Winona was a little put out that she wouldn’t be able to use it, as it was somewhat thrilling to trail her hand along the rough brick, to feel the moisture that had built up in the air from the few leaky pipes. However, she hadn’t realized that she could not hear any rats skittering in the walls. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Winona only acts like this because she's a true gothic heroine - overwhelmed by ennui, pale and tragic, does stupid things like wear necklaces of mysterious origins, goes down random secret passages.


	4. My Fairest,

She’d finally read the last of the love letters on December 23rd. Her roommates had already decorated the house and set up a tree, taking intermittent breaks when one of them felt too weak or dizzy from the effort. During these times, they’d sit around and half-heartedly mention that they needed to go to the gym while drinking hot cocoa. They hadn’t invited Winona to help out, perhaps believing that she’d rather rest, but after reading the last of the letters, which had ended with a sonnet, she simply laid in bed, re-reading the words and thinking of the writer.

> _My fairest love, the blossom to my thorns._  
>  _I’ve been ensnared within your veins, and life,_  
>  _Unknown to me, within your gaze is born,_  
>  _And pierces with a heat beyond a knife._  
>  _I, to you, am naught more than a shade;_  
>  _You are tender, more secluded and pure._  
>  _In your good grace, I am humbled and made_  
>  _Your ardent guard, to observe and endure._  
>  _How could I love you? Yet, how can I not?_  
>  _With your smooth neck and lively, pulsing heart._  
>  _But ah! Your throat, a haunting, taunting thought!_  
>  _My punishment softens; yet, once we part,_  
>  _And I must away with my weary soul,_  
>  _Remember my sweet words whilst we're alone._

That was the last of them, but now what? Should she tie the letters together and banish them to the attic again? Should she take off the locket and put them back with the delicate papers? She didn’t want to not keep them, yet they weren’t hers. She thought of the author and their cool gray eye in the locket, their language in describing the bloody scarlet color of their beloved’s hair and her elegant neck, their own condemnation and loneliness.

She wondered once more if his love had ever been returned. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would like to apologize for my crappy sonnet.


	5. Winona

That night, she’d had the most vivid dream of her life. The house was alit in its former glory, and Winona was dazed, entranced by the orchestra playing an unfamiliar song downstairs. Something beyond her understanding pulled her downstairs, and she played along, knowing it all to be a dream.

After all, why else would she be wearing that seafoam dress? It was in perfect condition; her red hair was twisted up, and the daintiest ringlet trailed down the back of her neck over her shoulder. Knowing it was a dream almost ruined the magic of the   
situation, but Winona allowed herself to relax in the atmosphere she’d created.

Garlands of holly lined the balustrade, the fragrance freshening the air and tangling with the warmth of mulled wine and laughter. Once Winona had finally tracked down the music to a ballroom she hadn’t yet seen in the house, she watched in rapt attention to the waltzing crowd, a flourish of coattails and petticoats. Yet, something seemed off; decades of fashion haphazardly intermingled in a Victorian pastiche. There was no Christmas tree in the room, in spite of the poinsettias and ribbons scattered everywhere, leaving Winona lost in a gothic atmosphere, the Romantic Dark Ages of American history.

Although most of the party had their attention focused on other people, one man across the room gazed at her. She couldn’t quite place his features; he was handsome, in a gaunt, aristocratic manner, and his hair was dark, yet nothing else about him seemed real. Everything about him told her to run, yet she felt urged to go to him.

And it was only a dream. What harm could there be? She approached, and, without a word, he took her hand in his own (unusually cold) hand and pressed her knuckles to his (unusually hot) lips in a gentle yet intimate kiss.

“You seem lost,” he said, and his voice seemed distant, like a long-forgotten thought that wasn’t hers.

“Where am I?”

“In a memory,” the man replied, leading her to the center of the ballroom.

“I’ve heard that in dreams, you can only see faces you’ve seen before,” she added as he turned her into his arms. The chill of his hands seeped through the back of her dress, and she shivered slightly.

He smiled, and she noticed the thinness of his lips and brows. She remembered why waltzing was so scandalous in Victorian times, being as close as they were. In a strange way, she felt coldness radiating off his body, but perhaps it was merely a trick of   
her brain in its dreaming state, trying to process the oncoming winter weather.

“The house has not seen so much life in years,” her partner noted, his gaze traveling over the energetic crowd. “I have been long waiting for this heavy shroud to be lifted.”

“This is a beautiful scene,” she admitted, “but you said this was a memory. I’ve never experienced anything like this before.”

“I never expected you to, for it isn’t yours. This is mine.”

Winona froze for a moment, missing a step, and her partner stopped, wilting.

“I…I’m sorry, I don’t quite understand,” she murmured. People were still dancing.

“You don’t.” He whispered, and it was a simple statement, a harsh truth, but her heart ached with the bitterness and misery in his tone. “So may I assume you don’t recognize me?” 

Winona, with a semi-conscious thought that screamed at her to stop and wake up, studied his face; yes, there was the eye of the author, thickly lashed and deeply set in a pale, drawn eye socket. A thrill coursed with her blood.

She stiffened, her fingers clawing at the shoulder of his coat. “No, no…I have to wake up.”

Desperation overtook his features. “Winona, wait, please…”

_It’s just a dream,_ she reasoned, _and everyone knows your name in a dream._ Still, panic consumed her, and the dancers’ necks began to bleed as they faded into staggering corpses. The light disappeared, and the holly began to shrivel. And, even though his grip was icy, she still wondered why she dreamt of the author. Was her mind compensating for her loneliness? Her ennui? And why was his breath so scalding against her neck?

“I have to wake up!” She choked out, struggling against his grip. He released her, and his devastation flooded the room. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uh...Merry Christmas.


	6. The Author

She startled awake, pressed against the cold, hard ground, with the brief, fearful thought that perhaps he’d been holding her against his chest.

But no, it was only the wooden floors of the poorly-insulated house.

And the only distinct thought that fought through her fear was that she didn’t know his name.

She wasn’t in her bedroom; she’d somehow made it to the living room. But still, as she reviewed how she’d gotten to the ballroom in her dreams compared to how she must have traveled to get here, the routes lined up. She grappled with her logic in an attempt to re-orient herself, but it made sense. She could see how renovations could have changed everything, split the ballroom in two and converted the other half into the new kitchen.

She pulled herself to her feet, trembling, but when she tried to rub her arms to warm them, she felt silk beneath her palms.

With a fresh tremor, she saw the stitches where the seafoam dress had been repaired. It was far too old now to be pristinely restored, but the attention and care that had gone into it was apparent. Her hair was down, but the locket was still latched around  
her throat.

A burst of fearful energy pushed her to action; she’d tried to turn the lights on, but the heavy winter storm outside had tripped up the power. She ran into the kitchen, digging through the drawer where they kept flashlights, but she couldn’t find one that worked. She settled on grabbing the next waxy candle she could get her hands on, struck a match, lit the wick, and ran back to her room, carefully shielding the flame. She stumbled over the hem of the skirt as she went up the stairs, but she kept moving, her pulse growing swifter by the second.

Her room was still. Her bed was made, her desk was clear, and her jewelry box sat open. Still holding the candle, Winona pushed aside the letters, (which she had neatly stacked, and how could she not have noticed how the pile had grown?) focusing on an  
unfamiliar piece of paper that had been half-tucked under them. 

> _Winona, frustrated and forever-distant_  
>  _You lay my hunger to rest_

 When moving aside the other letters, the fresh ink smeared on the side of her hand, and, _oh, God, please,_ she wanted to sob her prayer, _please don’t say that someone was in the house._

She fell to her knees, her free hand gripping the edge of her desk as she struggled to breathe naturally, her throat choked with tears.

Yet he hadn’t hurt her, she recalled. All he did was write letters and poems and kept them hidden from her in the attic for months, until he began adding to the stack once she’d found them.

In time, her fear exhausted every other thought and emotion. She was horrified – someone had been living in her house, had watched her, had pined from afar, and was who-knows-what – but she couldn’t react.

All she felt was a pull – no, she felt _compelled_ – to find him. She was back on her feet in moments, thinking of her sick roommates and the dead Saint Bernard, of the lack of rats in the house, as she approached her closet. She shoved her clothes aside, away from the flames, and pushed against the back. It was weak wood, easily curving beneath her palm, and she worked her hand around the edges blindly until she could feel a faint gap in the wood.

There was a door, open, leading to nothing but a narrow spiral staircase. She sharply inhaled the crisp air of her bedroom before she stepped into the musty chamber.

She held her skirt hitched above her knees, the train trailing over the stairs. Her ascent was slow as she tried to work out where she was going, relative to everything else in the house, yet became undeniably lost with the constant turning, turning, turning of  
the stairs.

She emerged in a room, barely eight feet in length from what she could see in the darkness. Winona approached the nearest wall, nose pressed against the paneling, and examined the shadows using what light the tiny window allowed, filtered through the  
moon and snow.

_The attic._

She pulled away and continued searching. On the opposite end of the narrow room there was a desk with a tablecloth of papers, all covered with rough drafts of poems and letters, sketches and paintings, mostly of her.

 _Yes,_ she thought, somewhat unnerved but unsurprised. _He’d once mentioned painting._

Winona was hesitant to go to the far edge of the room, to the corner where not even the light of her candle could reach, but still, her thoughts were consumed by the author. The poet.

So she went, her steps slow and silent, the flooring rough against her bare feet. The flame of her candle sputtered a glow across the room, since her hands were shaking. Every inch of her felt cold, and from up here, in the secret room of the attic, the wind  
lightly brushed her red hair against her throat.

And there, at the edge of the room, was a polished black coffin, emblazoned with _Alastor Thorne._

In spite of the screaming protests of her mind, Winona approached, her arm outstretched. Modern coffins are usually rectangular, but this one had the infamous tapered shape. Candle wax oozed over the fingers of her left hand, but her right was  
strangely stable as she gripped the lid.

She hesitated; the ink on the unfinished letter had still been wet, yet no one had been in her room. If they’d come up the passage before her, then this was the only place a living person could hide. She could see, in her mind’s eye, one of the shriveled corpses from her dream resting here, unmoving for over a century.

Either way, Winona intended to shove the flame of the candle into the face of whomever laid inside and run.

With a deep breath of the musty air, Winona shoved the lid of the coffin aside; it was now open.

Open, but empty.

**Author's Note:**

> Another original story written for a class, this time creative writing. This was just a challenge for me to utilize poetry in a story. The original concept, where there was a ghost in the house, was an attempt to pay tribute to Charles Dicken's Christmas ghost stories, but make it into a dark romance, as I love to do. i uploaded it here because, as my laptop broke this semester, I'm trying to put as many finished stories online as I can.


End file.
